CHAPTER VIII

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MAKING A NIGHT OF IT.

“Ale’s not so good For the children of men As people have boasted; For less and less, As more he drinketh, Knows man himself.

The kern of forgetfulness Sits on the drunken And steals the man’s senses,— By the bird’s pinions Fettered I lay In Gunlada’s dwelling.

Drunken I lay, Lay thoroughly drunken, With Fjalar the wise. This is the best of drink, That every one afterwards Comes to his senses.”

_High Song of Odin the Old._

Many minutes had not expired, during which brief space the fishermen had been luxuriating in their dry clothes, when the boats were seen working their way back across the tail of the Aal Foss rapid, as they returned with the party from the right bank, which, after bobbing about on the ripples and cross currents, shot into their little harbour beneath the encampment.

Birger came up the bank, half-laughing, yet looking as if he had been doing something he was ashamed of.

“Where the deuce have you been, Birger?” said the Captain, as that worthy threw himself on the turf under the birch-tree: “Jacob says you have been sacrificing to Nyssen, whoever he is.”

“So I have,” said Birger; “but don’t speak so loud. I will tell you all about it.”

“Not speak so loud,” said the Captain; “why not?”

“Well,” said Birger, rather hesitatingly, “Nyssen does not like to be spoken of. That is to say, the men don’t exactly like to hear people speaking of him, at least by name, if it is above the breath.”

“Come, come, Birger, be honest,” said the Parson.

“Well, if you must have it, I do not quite like it myself. I do not believe in such things, of course; but there is no good in doing what everybody thinks unlucky.”

“Well, well,” said the Captain, “but tell us what you have been about. I am quite in the dark as yet about this mysterious gentleman or lady.”

“Why, the Nyss,” said Birger, sinking his voice at the word to a whisper, “is a spirit of the air, just as the Neck (a similar whisper) is a spirit of the water.”

“The very familiars of the Lady of Branksome,” said the Parson:—

It was the Spirit of the Flood, And he spoke to the Spirit of the Fell.

“Very likely, but our spirits, like our people, are not indifferent to the pleasures of eating and drinking; and therefore, whenever we start on an expedition, we propitiate them with an offering.”

“And the offering consists of——?”

“What we like best ourselves, cakes and ale.”

“But what had you to do with it,” said the Captain; “I suppose you do not believe in spirits?”

“The men asked leave to go, when they had done their work, and wanted me to go with them, to that high rock you see down there,—for they always choose out some bare and elevated locality, as best adapted to a spirit of the air; and so—well, I went with them; don’t laugh at me.”

“That will I not,” said the Parson; “you could not have done a wiser thing. Always fall in with men’s superstitions; there is nothing that attaches them so much as humouring their little illegitimate beliefs; to say nothing,” he added slily, “of believing a little in them yourself.”

“How is this offering made?” said the Captain: “what are the rites belonging to the worship of a spirit of the air?”

“They are simple enough,” said Birger, “and not at all like those you would see on the stage of London,—no blue fires or poetical incantations: they consist in simply placing the cake on the most exposed pinnacle you can find, pouring the ale into the nearest hollow that will hold it, and then retreating in silence, and without looking behind you.”

“While some thirsty soul, after the manner of Bel in the Apocrypha, plays Nyssen and accepts the offering,” said the Captain.

“What! eat Nyssen’s offering! Tom, what do you say to that?”—for the men were still fidgetting about the fire,—“what do you say to that? The Captain thinks that one of you will eat up Nyssen’s cake; what do you say about it?”

“Well,” said Tom, “we have bold men in Norway, as all our histories will tell you; but bold as we are, I do not think you will get a man in the whole country to do that.”

“There was a young fellow once who did it in my country though,” said Jacob, “and dearly he paid for it. The family used to place the yearly gifts to Nyssen under the sails of their windmill every Christmas Eve;—you Norwegians do not know what windmills are; you grind all your corn by water, poor devils!”

Here Tom and Torkel, both Tellemarken men, broke in simultaneously; the one swearing that, in the Tellemark, windmills were as plenty as fir trees; the other vociferating, somewhat incongruously, that no nation two degrees from actual barbarism could ever think of such a piece of machinery at all.

Birger stilled their national animosities by wishing “The Thousand” would take them all three, and their windmills into the bargain, and Jacob went on with his story.

“The eldest son,” he said, “was a sad unbeliever; he had been a very good boy as long as he had lived with his father and mother at Lerum, but when he grew up he had gone to Copenhagen and got corrupted; for, as his honour Lieutenant Birger knows, they are all sad infidels at Copenhagen.” Here was likely to be another outbreak; for the Danes, though it is quite true that a great many of them are not only sceptics in fairy mythology but in religion also, are yet vehemently regretted by the Norwegians, who were in no ways pleased with that act of the Congress of Vienna which separated them from Denmark; a fact which our friend Jacob was perfectly aware of.

Peace was again effected by a vigorous kick from his fellow-countrymen, together with some observations respecting a donkey in a state of eternal condemnation; and Jacob went on as if nothing particular had happened.

“Well,” said he, “the young man found that the best ale and sweetest cake were always given to Nyssen, so he slipped out and gobbled them up himself. During the whole year that followed that Christmas, no great harm came of it, only there was always something wrong about the windmill; now a sail blown away, now a cog broken; there was plenty of grist, trade was lively enough, it was always something to do with the wind, and, as far as that was concerned, nothing went right. Still no one suspected the reason, till Christmas Eve came round again, and another sweet cake and another bottle of strong ale were placed under the mill for Nyssen. The night was as still and as quiet as this evening is,—quieter if possible; there was not a breath of wind, and the snow looked like a winding-sheet in the moonlight. Well, the young man slipped out again; but scarcely had he stooped to pick up the bottle, when a furious gust of wind arose, scattering the snow like flour out of a sack; the sails flew round as if they were mad; it was said that a figure in a pointed cap and a red jacket sat astride on the axle, and one of the sails taking the young man on the side of the head, threw him as far as I could fling a stone. He sank into the snow, which closed over him, and no one knew what had become of him till the thaw came on. It was very late that year, for the ground was not clear till Walpurgis’ Night, and then they found him, and Nyssen’s broken bottle still in his hand. It was by that they found out how it had happened. I would not be the man to touch anything belonging to Nyssen.”

“Nor I neither,” chimed in the two Norsemen.

“Johnstone and Maxwell both agree for once,” said the Parson, laughing; “and I will tell you another thing, neither would I. But now, Mr. Jacob, that we have done everything that can be expected of us by the spirits of the air, who, I hope, in common gratitude, will give us fishermen a cloudy sky and a little bit of a breeze to-morrow, I must say I should like to take my turn at the cakes and ale; so let us have whatever you have got in your big pot there, and bring us a bucket of strawberries and cream for dessert.”

The dinner was by no means so elaborate an affair as that of yesterday; this was occasioned, in some measure, by their want of sport, but, principally, because all had been far too much engaged in the necessary business of the camp to think much of eating. The solids, such as they were, that is to say, beef and pork, out of the harness cask, were soon despatched, and the huge camp kettle, one of the old-fashioned ante-Wellingtonian affairs, as big as a mortar, and nearly as heavy, was sent down to the men, while the fishermen lounged at full length on the turf, enjoying their rest over Jacob’s plentiful provision of strawberries and cream.

Fénélon has, somewhere or other, a fable about a man who had the power of procuring, “_pour son argent_,” as the good Bishop says, half-a-dozen men’s appetites and digestions. The man does not seem, in the fable, to have made a very good use of his extraordinary powers, or to have derived any extraordinary pleasure from them. If he had only come out campaigning in Norway, he might have had his five appetites for nothing, and been much the better for them all.

Meanwhile, the lower table did not at all seem to be in want of an appetite; the kettle was emptied, and whole heaps of flad-bröd, sour as verdjuice, and pots of butter, such as no nose or stomach, out of Norway, could tolerate, were fast disappearing beneath the unceasing attacks of seven gluttonous Scandinavians—while, as the twilight darkened, and diminished the restraint they might possibly have felt at the presence of their superiors, the noise grew louder and louder. Jacob began some interminable ballad about the sorrows and trials of little Kirstin, a very beautiful lady, who went through all sorts of misfortunes, and did not seem a “bit better than she should be;” but that goes for nothing at all in Swedish song, and very little in Swedish life. This he sang, chorus and all, to his own share. It seemed to affect the worthy man very little, that he was almost his own audience; no one seemed to attend him, but his song went on, stanza after stanza, uninterruptedly, forming a sort of running accompaniment to the shouts and screams of “Gammle Norgé,” “Wackere Lota, or, Kari,” which startled the echoes alternately, according as love, or patriotism, was the prevailing sentiment.

At last, they began drinking healths—“Skaal Herr Carblom,” “Skaal for the well-born singer;” for, like the old Spanish nobility, though they addressed one another as Tom, Piersen, and so forth, they always gave the interloper his full title.

“Jeg takker de,” said Jacob, solemnly, without, however, pausing for one moment in his song.

“Little Kirstin, she came to the bridal hall,— We will begin with the wooing,— And a little page answered to her call, My best beloved, I ne’er can forget you”—

Here broke in Tom, beating time to his music with a horn which he had replenished to the very brim, and of which he was imparting the contents very liberally to the turf round him—

“Wet your clay, Andy! Out with the brandy! We live in jolly way,— Here’s to you, night or day! Look at sister Kajsa Stina, See her bottles bright and clear-ah! Take the horn, good fellow! grin-ah! Grin and swill and drink like me!”

Jacob’s voice was again audible—

“She tied her horse in the garden there: We will begin with the wooing”—

“Skaal Thorsen! skaal Tom Engelsk! skaal for the British navy!”

“Rule, Britannia!” shouted Tom. Jacob went on—

“We will begin with the wooing: She brushed and—”

Here a general chorus—

“To the brim, young men! fill it up! fill again! Drain! drain, young men!—’tis to Norway you drain. Your fathers have sown it, Your fields they have grown it; Then quaff it, young men! for he’ll be the strongest Who drinks of it deepest and sits at it longest.”

Jacob’s voice became audible, like a symphony, between the verses—

“She brushed and combed her golden hair,”—

when again rose up the wild chorus, overwhelming it under the volume of sound:

“To the brim, old men! fill it up! fill again! Drain! drain, old men!—’tis to Norway you drain. There’s health in the cup,— Fill it up! fill it up! And quaff it, old men! for he’ll live the longest Who drinks of it deepest and likes it the strongest.”

“By the Harp of Bragi,” said Birger, “I’ll back old Jacob against the field,—that fellow has such bottom!” for the honest toper’s voice came again dreamily up the hill where they were sitting, during the pause that followed this outburst.

“Little Kirstin then passed out from the door,— We had best begin with the wooing: She said, I shall hither come no more,— My best beloved! I never will forget thee.

Forth she went to the garden there,— We had best begin with the wooing: She hung herself with her golden hair,— My best beloved! I never can forget thee.”

“Skaal for Birger! skaal for the brave Lieutenant! skaal for the royal guard!” shouted one, waxing more bold as the night drew on.

“Gammle Norgé!” screamed back an opponent, and immediately Torkel burst out, with his fine bass voice, into the national song, drowning entirely poor Jacob’s melancholy ditty, which never got much beyond the wooing after all.

“The hardy Norseman’s house of yore Was on the foaming wave, And there he gathered bright renown— The bravest of the brave. O, ne’er should we forget our sires, Wherever we may be; For they did win a gallant name, And ruled the stormy sea.

What though our hands be weaker now Than they were wont to be When boldly forth our fathers sailed And conquered Normandy? We still may sing their deeds of fame, In thrilling harmony; They won FOR US that gallant name, Ruling the stormy sea!”—

Enthusiasm was at its height, as the full chorus thundered forth from all the voices—

“Never will we forget our sires, Wherever we may be; They won for us that gallant name, Ruling the stormy sea!”

Whether Jacob joined in it, or persevered in the sorrows of little Kirstin, it is impossible to say; but the loud-ringing alto of Birger came in tellingly from the house of the Nobles, accompanied by the bass of his two friends. The compliment was taken at once, “Skaal for the high-born Fishermen!” “Skaal for the noble gentlemen!” “Skaal for Vict_ou_ria!” “Skaal for Carl Johann!” “Skaal for England!”

“Skaal for Sweden,” shouted Jacob at last.

“Gammle Norgé! Gammle Norgé! Sweden and Norway!—Sweden and Norway for ever! Skaal! Skaal!”

“Upon my word,” said the Parson, “some one must have been shelling out in good earnest. There goes something stronger than water to all that noise.”

“Well,” said Birger, “it is very true: they did their work this afternoon like men, and then, instead of going and buying brandy, and making beasts of themselves, they very properly sent Torkel as spokesman to me, and asked my permission to get drunk, which, as they had behaved so well, of course I granted them, and gave them five or six orts to buy brandy with.”

The Parson burst out laughing: “Well, Birger, it is very kind of you, to save them from making beasts of themselves: rather a novel way of doing it, though.”

“O, it is all right,” said Birger; “that is the way we always do in my country, we get it over at once: they will be as sober as judges after this—if we had not indulged them when they knew they had deserved it, they would always have been hankering after brandy, and dropping off drunk when they were most wanted: they will be as sober as judges after this, I tell you,” he reiterated, observing a slight smile of incredulity on the faces of both his companions.

“I do not feel quite so confident of their being as sober as judges to-morrow, as I do about their being as drunk as pigs to-night,” said the Captain; “though, to be sure, I do not know what judges are in Norway; but it does seem to me that five or six orts[12] are rather a liberal allowance, in a country where one can get roaring drunk for half-a-dozen skillings.”

“That is just the very thing I do not want them to do,” said Birger. “Whenever a Norseman gets roaring drunk, he is sure to kick up a row: it is very much better that they should get beastly drunk at once; then they go to sleep and sleep it off, and no one the wiser.”

“I should have thought, though,” said the Captain, “that you gave them quite enough for that, and a good remainder for another day into the bargain.”

“It is little you know of the Norwegian, then,” said Birger, “or, for the matter of that, of the Swede either: he is not the man to make two bites of a cherry, or to leave his brandy in the bottom of the keg. Besides, they will consider themselves upon honour. They asked my leave to get drunk on this particular night, and I gave them the money to do it with; it would be absolute swindling, to get drunk with my money on any other occasion.”

“Upon my word,” said the Captain, “this a terrible drawback to your beautiful country. Our fellows in Ireland used to get drunk now and then, to be sure, but they had always the grace to be ashamed of it. These scoundrels do it in such a business-like way.”

“Your countryman, Laing, sets that down to the score of our virtues,” said Birger. “He considers it much better to act upon principle, like our people, than to yield to temptation, as your English and Irish sots do. I must say, though, that he is not half so indulgent to us poor Swedes.”

“My countryman, Laing,” said the Parson, “though a very observant traveller, is, also, a very extreme republican and a very prejudiced writer. He gives us facts in monarchical Sweden, as well as in republican Norway, and he gives them as he sees them, no doubt; but, he looks at the two countries through glasses of different tints. Now, my idea is, that, in point of drunkenness, there is not a pin to choose.”

“Yes, but there is, though,” said Birger. “The Norwegian is quarrelsome in his cups; and you will seldom find that in any part of Sweden, unless in Scånia, and the Scånians are half Danes yet. I had the precaution to take away those gentlemen’s knives when I gave them the money for their brandy (and, I must admit, they gave them up with very good grace), or, the chances are, that we should have lost the services of that ass Jacob, and given a job for the Landamptman to-morrow. Why, half the party-coloured gentlemen in the castle at Christiania have earned their iron decorations in some drunken brawl or other.”[13]

“Well, that may be,” said the Parson. “I have not experienced enough to gainsay you; but you must admit that as far as simple drinking goes, the two nations have the organ of drunkenness pretty equally developed.”

“I should think it must be a barrel organ, then,” said the Captain, “if we are to judge by the quantity it contains.”

“Thank your stars it has got a good many stops in it. The Scandinavian does not drink irregularly, like your people whom you can never reckon upon for two days together. He has his days of solemn drunkenness—some of them political, such as the coronation; or the king’s name day; or, here, in Norway, the signing of their cursed constitution. Some of them, again, are religious—such as Christmas, and Easter, and Whitsuntide: these are days in which all Scandinavia gets drunk as one man. And there are a few little domestic anniversaries besides—such as christenings and weddings; but, this is all, except a chance affair, like this; so that, by a glance at the calendar, and a little inquiry into a man’s private history, you may always know when to find him sober, and fit for work.”

“Sober, meaning three or four glasses of brandy?” said the Parson.

“Yes,” said Birger. “He seldom goes beyond that, on ordinary days; and, therefore, on festivals like this, I think him very well entitled to make up for it.”

“I think, though,” said the Parson, “when I was in Sweden, last year, I did see such things as stocks for drunkards, at some of the church doors.”

“Yes, you did, at all of them; but, you never saw any one in them. How is a mayor to order a man into the stocks, for drunkenness, when the chances are, that he was just as drunk himself on the very same occasion?”

“How do you account for this universal system of drinking spirits?” said the Captain.

“It is easy enough to account for it,” said the Parson; for Birger rather shirked the question. “Every landed proprietor has a right to a private still; the duty is a farthing a gallon, carriage is difficult, and brandy is much more portable than corn. Will not this account for some of it? I do not happen to know what may be the return for Sweden; but, for Norway, it is somewhat over five million gallons a-year, in a country which does not grow nearly enough of corn to support itself; and this, as the population does not come up to a million and a-half, gives three and a-half gallons per Christian, to every man, woman, and child, in the country.”

“Come, come,” said Birger, “if you go to statistics, look at home. Your Mr. Hume moved, last session, for a return of all the men that had been picked up, drunk, in the course of the preceding year; and, in Glasgow alone, there were nearly fifteen thousand—that is to say, one out of every twenty-two of the whole population. Do not talk to us of drunkenness. Did you ever hear of the controversy between the pot and the kettle?”

“The Scotch are no more our countrymen, than the Norwegians are yours,” said the Parson; “and, if I recollect right, that very return gave no more than one in every six hundred, picked up, drunk, in our Manchester; and Manchester is not what we call a moral place, either.”[14]

“In that very place, Glasgow,” said the Captain, “where, for my sins, I was quartered last year, I was actually taken up before the magistrates, and fined five shillings, for what the hypocritical sinners call ‘whustling on the Saubboth,’ and it was only Saturday night, either—the rascally Jews! They are fellows to

Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to.

The scoundrels couldn’t whistle a tune themselves on any day of the week, ‘were it their neck verse at Hairibee;’ they have no notion of music, beyond the bagpipe and the Scotch fiddle.”

“Five shillings?” said the Parson, musingly; “that is just the sum they fine people, in London, for being drunk and disorderly.”

“Then, in all human probability, the Captain made one individual item in Mr. Hume’s fifteen thousand himself.”

“Very possibly,” said the Captain. “It was Saturday night, and I will not say I might not have been a little screwed. When one is in Turkey one must live as turkeys live.”

“Well,” said the Parson, “I believe all northern nations have a natural turn for drunkenness, but laws and regulations may increase or diminish the amount of it; and the laws of both these countries tend most particularly to increase it. With you it is a regular case of ‘Drunkenness made easy.’ Besides, public opinion sets that way too. If I were suspected of anything approaching to the state of our friends down below, I never could face my parish again. Your parish priest might be carried home and tucked into bed by a dozen of his faithful and hard-headed parishioners on Saturday night, and if the thing did not come round too often, would get up not a pin the worse on Sunday morning, either in health or in reputation.”

“I think,” said the Captain, “public presents are a very fair test of public propensities. In the snuffy days of the last century and the beginning of this, every public character, from the Duke of Wellington down to William Cobbett, had the freedoms of all sorts of things given them in golden snuff-boxes. Now, look at your people. When your king paid a visit to the University of Upsala, the most appropriate present he could think of making to that learned body, was an ancient drinking-horn,—of course, by way of encouraging the national tastes. And when he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Odin and Freya, the most appropriate present which that learned body could make to him in their turn, was another ancient drinking-horn, which had the additional value of having once been the property of those heroic, but, if there is any truth in Sagas, exceedingly drunken divinities.”

“Well, well,” said Birger, good-humouredly (and it must be said that his was a case of good-humour under difficulties), “every nation has its own national sins to answer for, and it is no use for me to deny that ours is drunkenness. But what else can you expect from a people whose ideal of the joys of heaven used to be fighting all day, and after a huge dinner of boiled pork, getting beastly drunk upon beer? Gangler, in the prose Edda, asks Har, ‘How do your Heroes pass their time in Valhalla when they are not drinking?’ And Har replies, ‘Every day, as soon as they have dressed themselves, they ride out into the court, and fight till they cut each other in pieces. This is their pastime; but when meal-time approaches, they return to drink in Valhalla.’ Or, if you will have the same in verse, this is what the Vafthrudnis Mal says:—

The Einherjir all, On Odin’s plain, Hew daily each other While chosen the slain are; From the fray they then ride, And drink ale with the Œsir.”

“After all,” said the Parson, “this is nothing more than a ghostly tournament; and I have no doubt but that the haughty tournaments of the middle ages, if deprived of their mediæval gilding, would be very like the hewings, ale swillings, and pork banquetings of the Einherjir. I hope, though, that they brewed good ale in Asgard.”

“I dare say,” said the Captain, “that, after their carousal, they wanted a little sleep to fit them for the toils of the next day; I am sure I do, and I vote we try what sort of couches Birger has prepared for us. Our once merry friends below seem to be as fast asleep as swine now, and as quiet. To tell you the truth, I am a little tired with our day’s work, and we certainly have another good day’s work cut out for us to-morrow.”

“With all my heart,” said Birger, finishing off what, from its colour, might have been a glass of water, but was not. As Odin says—

“No one will charge thee With evil, if early Thou goest to slumber.”

“Come along, then,” said the Captain, “turn in; and may the Nyss to whom we have sacrificed send us to-morrow ‘a southerly wind and a cloudy sky.’”

There are several national songs in Norway. That which Torkel sings is an ancient song, and has been adapted and arranged as a chorus, by Hullah; but it is not that which is generally known as “Gammle Norgé.” This, though eminently popular, is but a modern composition. Its author is Bjerregaard, a Norse poet of some eminence. It has been thus rendered into English by Mr. Latham:—

Minstrel, awaken the harp from its slumbers! Strike for old Norway, the land of the free! High and heroic in soul-stirring numbers, Clime of our fathers, we strike it for thee! Old recollections Awake our affections,— They hallow the name of the land of our birth; Each heart beats its loudest, Each cheek glows its proudest, For Norway the Ancient, the Throne of the Earth!

Spirit! look back on her far-flashing glory, The far-flashing meteor that bursts on thy glance, On chieftain and hero immortal in story, They press to the battle like maids to the dance. The blood flows before them, The wave dashes o’er them, They reap with the sword what they plough with the keel; Enough that they leave To the country that bore them Bosoms to bleed for her freedom and weal.

The Shrine of the Northman, the Temple of Freedom, Stands like a rock where the stormy wind breaks; The tempests howl round it, but little he’ll heed them,— Freely he thinks, and as freely he speaks. The bird in its motion, The wave in its ocean, Scarcely can rival his liberty’s voice; Yet he obeys, With a willing devotion Laws of his making and kings of his choice.

Land of the forest, the fell, and the fountain,— Blest with the wealth of the field and the flood,— Steady and truthful, the sons of thy mountain, Pay the glad price of thy rights with their blood. Ocean hath bound thee, Freedom hath found thee,— Flourish, old Norway, thy flag be unfurled! Free as the breezes And breakers around thee— The pride of thy children, the Throne of the World!

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